Le troisieme policier

by Flann O'Brien

by
Flann O'Brien

book data

1,857 ratings, 4.02 average rating, 316 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		40%
4		32%
3		19%
2		5%
1		2%

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published

October 1st 2001 by Granit (first published 1967)

details

Reliure inconnue

setting

Ireland

isbn

2862811637 (isbn13: 9782862811635)

description

A comic trip through hell in Ireland, as told by a murderer, The Third Policeman is another inspired bit of confusing and comic lunacy from the warped…more

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Aug 12, 2007

Jacob rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: favorites

Read in January, 2002

When he was unable to find a publisher for this, his second novel, Flann O'Brien famously stashed the manuscript away in a drawer and told his friends that it had been lost. Some commentators actually think that he was scared of what he had been written, that something about it upset his meek Catholic soul. I don't know about that, but the book's undoubtedly disquieting. The novel sometimes feels like the clanking boiler room behind the scenes of another, less nonsensical novel, and takes pla...more

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8 comments

Mar 03, 2009

Paul rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: 2009

Read in March, 2009

The wackiness here is pure gold. I love a book that terrifies me on multiple levels, and I can certainly say that this book succeeded in that regard. Not to mention it is hilarious (particularly the footnotes on de Selby! Gold! Pure Gold! Don't skip them!)

I know that the conceit of this book may seem cheap, tired, cliche by this point in time, but that's not really important. This book has much more in it than plot alone. The sheer magnitude it took to create de Selby was a task of Bor...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

2 comments

Sep 30, 2007

Paul rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: novels

This is one of the 1001 books you have to read before you visit the 1001 natural wonders you have to eat before you die. Something like that. I already read At-Swim-Two-Birds a lonnnnng time ago, and that was quite amusing - mad Irish postmodern humour which the Pythons surely must have known and loved. So this one should be quite amusing too.

Later : this was one I should have read when I was 13. It's like I don't think I'll ever bother listening to Genesis now, however brilliant the...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

5 comments

Oct 29, 2008

Núria rated it:

(review of isbn 8493485489)

bookshelves: 2-ni-fu-ni-fa, 2008, literatura-en-ingles, prestados, siglo-xx

Read in November, 2008

recommended to Núria by: Donald Barthelme
recommends it for: los que tengan paciencia suficiente para aguantar pesadillas surrealistas

En el primer capítulo de la segunda temporada de 'Lost', cuando por fin abren la escotilla y entran en el búnquer, el libro que está leyendo en este momento Desmond es 'El tercer policía' de Flann O'Brien. No me acordaba yo de este detalle. Puede que no me fijara y, si me fijé, seguro que me pensé que se trataba de una novela de detectives al uso (no tiene nada que ver con detectives y algunos de los creadores de 'Lost' han reconocido la influencia de esta novela en la trama de la serie). ...more En el primer capítulo de la segunda temporada de 'Lost', cuando por fin abren la escotilla y entran en el búnquer, el libro que está leyendo en este momento Desmond es 'El tercer policía' de Flann O'Brien. No me acordaba yo de este detalle. Puede que no me fijara y, si me fijé, seguro que me pensé que se trataba de una novela de detectives al uso (no tiene nada que ver con detectives y algunos de los creadores de 'Lost' han reconocido la influencia de esta novela en la trama de la serie). No volví a hablar del libro hasta que lo vi encabezando el cánon personal de Donald Barthelme. Harold Bloom también la cita como una de las mejores novelas del siglo XX. Y la contraportada lo compara con Lewis Carroll, pero en oscuro. Aunque a mí me recuerda más a Samuel Beckett. Pero a pesar de todos estos referentes la novela no me ha gustado. No me ha gustado, no.

El protagonista es un hombre con una pierna de madera que un buen día se olvida de su propio nombre. Se crió en un internado y allí entró en contacto (y se obsesionó) con la obra de De Selby, un filósofo loco que quiere demostrar científicamente las teorías más absurdas como que la tierra tiene forma de salsicha. El protagonista quier publicar una magna obra (la definitiva) sobre De Selby pero no analizando tanto la obra del propio De Selby como la de todos sus críticos*. En definitiva, quiere hacer criticismo del criticismo, pero para esto necesita dinero. Así que decide matar un viejo que está forrado para quedarse con su dinero. Pero las cosas no salen como estaba previsto y el protagonista termina en una comisaría de policía con dos policías muy raros y un tercero que nunca aparece y del que los otros dos opinan que está absolutamente chiflado. Los dos primeros capítulos, antes de llegar a la comisaría, me gustaron mucho, pero luego se desinfla y a pesar de que en varios momentos parece que la cosa toma carrerilla para alcanzar el vuelo, para mí nunca consigue despegar. El giro final también me gustó mucho (ciertamente es brillante), pero lo cierto es que todo lo del medio me aburrió bastante.

Creo que el principal problema del libro es que el aire de pesadilla pocas veces funciona. Puede funcionar en Franz Kafka, pero porque sus pesadillas son las del mundo real. Lo que pasa es que la mayoría de veces las pesadillas están tan desconectadas del mundo real que para mí me es imposible entrar en ellas. No me dicen nada. Sí, me encanta contar mis pesadillas a otros, pero me parece tedioso tener que oir las de otros; ¿qué importancia tienen si no están para nada relacionadas conmigo? El otro problema del libro es que a mí nunca me pareció tan raro, tan divertido y tan horroroso (no en el sentido de "malo" si no en el sentido de "dar miedo") como dicen que es y como pretende ser. Para mí le falta consistencia y empaque. Da la sensación que son una serie de ideas buenas pero mal conectadas. A parte de la relación de simbiosis entre un hombre y su bicicleta, a mí las únicas ideas que me interesaron son las relacionadas con 'Lost': el tipo raro de la cabaña, una caja que contiene algo que te puede hacer conseguir todo lo que quieras, los dos policías que siempre están haciendo mediciones raras, un mapa en el techo, un búnquer subterráneo en el que el tiempo no pasa, etc. Sí, una obra singular e inclasificable y valiente y tal, pero que no cuaja para nada. De aquellas que me gustaría que fueran mejores.

______________
*La obra de De Selby nos es explicada con pelos y señales básicamente a través de una serie de larguísimas y tediosas notas a pie de página. Entiendo que pretende ser una parodia inteligente, pero es tan largo que no tiene puñetera gracia y acaba siendo un galimatías insufrible. No me avergüenza decir que me salté muchas. Y es que no se contenta en describirnos exhaustivamente (y agotadoramente) las teorías absurdas de De Selby, sino que encima tenemos que aguantar también la relación de las disputas que hay entre los diferentes críticos de De Selby y la supuesta auténtica identidad de estos. Un muermo.(less)

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4 comments

Mar 03, 2008

Lori rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: fiction, lost-lit

Read in May, 2008

Before I begin, let me warn you.
***DO NOT READ THE INTRODUCTION UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE READ THE NOVEL** I made the mistake of reading the intro first, and that intro contains a spoiler. It gave away the entire premise of the novel. So I feel like I was gyped a bit here.

That being said, even tho I read the novel knowing the outcome, it didnt ruin the story for me at all.

TTP is hung up on de Selby (who is this dude?) some of his theories. Here are a few that really ...more

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4 comments

Nov 24, 2008

Powells.com rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

One of the funniest books I have ever read, but also one of the most profoundly unsettling. This is a story told by a robber/murderer who ends up at a police station and discusses such vital issues as the location of eternity, the earth's sausage shape, houses full of strawberry jam, and bicycles (of the utmost importance). The narrator's utter confusion becomes our own, leading to some of the most hilarious dialogue ever put to paper — though by the end of the book you might just be laughing ...more

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Apr 13, 2009

Cait rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: 1001, favorites, lost-lit, owned, read-in-2009

Read in August, 2009

According to the "Atomic Theory", I am 80% couch.

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

3 comments

Apr 05, 2008

Saxon rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

Read in March, 2008

People turn into bikes, policeman decide how old people live by placing invisible cloths over them when they are born, underground shelters where times doesn't stop and the seemingly chaotic but highly systematic writings of an eccentric savant named de Selby to help guide us through all our thoughts and experiences.
The Third Policeman is a surreal, satirical and often highly comedic book in which the actual story matters very little in the context of the whatever the hell O'Brien is tryin...more

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Jun 26, 2007

Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

Read in January, 1999

recommends it for: Irish/Absurdist lit fiends

In the opening pages of the novel, the narrator, a one-legged man who has lost both his parents, falls in with a scoundrel called John Divney, who concocts a plot to rob Old Man Mathers’ cash box. The narrator agrees to this conspiracy, and the two men lay in wait for the unsuspecting fellow. When Mathers comes along the road, Divney hits him with an iron bicycle pump and urges the narrator to finish him off with a spade. The narrator complies, and when he does so he feels “the fabric of the...more In the opening pages of the novel, the narrator, a one-legged man who has lost both his parents, falls in with a scoundrel called John Divney, who concocts a plot to rob Old Man Mathers’ cash box. The narrator agrees to this conspiracy, and the two men lay in wait for the unsuspecting fellow. When Mathers comes along the road, Divney hits him with an iron bicycle pump and urges the narrator to finish him off with a spade. The narrator complies, and when he does so he feels “the fabric of the skull crumple up crisply like an empty eggshell.” What he does not feel is sorrow, sympathy or regret. Then things get weird.

Divney disappears with the money, leaving the narrator to bury the body. Eventually, Divney returns and reveals that he’s stashed the black box under a loose floorboard in Mathers’ house. The narrator stumps off to retrieve it and finds Mathers inside the house. Convinced he’s seeing a ghost, he proceeds to converse with him about all manner of things. What neither he nor the reader realize is that Mathers is not the only spook in house.

The murderer’s quest for the black box takes him to the last place he’d want to find himself: a policeman’s barracks. Here Sergeant Pluck and Policemen MacCruiskeen and Fox — the third policeman — bring law and order to a district inhabited by people whose atoms, after years of riding over rocky roads, are mixed up with their bicycles, leaving them part man, part machine. Time speeds up and stands still. The characters descend into labyrinthine networks of nonsensical rooms that are reminiscent of the dull deviousness of choose-your-own-adventure novel and “off the map” experiences inside of video games. This, we are told, is “Eternity,” and it feels like it.

O’Brien’s narrator is a disciple of the fictional philosopher De Selby, a man with an explanation for everything. De Selby’s theories are furnished in the footnotes, which become increasingly bloated and constitute a critical commentary that runs parallel to the story. In addition to De Selby, we are given glimpses of his colleagues and critics abroad: Basset, Du Grabandier, Hatchjaw, Kraus and Le Clerque, some of whom may be the same people in disguise. Given O’Brien’s penchant for pseudonyms, this should hardly come as a surprise. It is a catalog of names that would not be out of place in an Edward Gorey story.

Then there are the critics’ critics, exponentially generating blather. Everyone has had the feeling of lostness that comes with pointing two mirrors at one another and watching the worlds inside of worlds multiply into infinity; O’Brien has created its fictive equivalent and populated it with all manner of “queer ghastly things”. Doppelgängers lurch about, and a stifling aura bears down on everyone and everything until you can almost feel the déjà vu coming. It is a tale of ordinary fantasy; there aren’t any monsters in the moat, but the beast in the jungle is a bloke with a bicycle pump who brains you the moment your back is turned.

The Third Policeman is like a bad dream that refuses to end. The plot seldom excites, yet the metaphysical drama lends the proceedings an aura of dread that never quite goes away. Its tone is intensely impersonal; still, the proceedings crackle with humor. Howard Moss in The New Yorker captures what are, perhaps, The Third Policeman’s rarest qualities: “For no reason one can definitely point to, it is as strangely affecting as it is funny.”

(Excerpted from review published in the LA Weekly in May 2005:
[http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/wls/lost-classic/13640/])

(less)

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Oct 21, 2007

Jenna rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: irish-literature

Flann O’Brien asks something exceedingly personal of his readers when they encounter his work The Third Policeman, and many may not be wholly up to the challenge. For this book, a wild romp through some of the most interesting and most terrifying aspects of the human mind, O’Brien asks for his readers to throw down what they know as common sense, and to allow what might otherwise be considered the irrational to become at least plausible as he liberally breaks conventions of modernist literat...more

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Dec 10, 2007

Xysea rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

Read in January, 2008

Okay, well I enjoyed this book immensely.

Some of it was just flat out bizarre, but other parts of it were brilliant! I went to Wikipedia to read up on its history, and was amazed to find that it was written almost 20 years before it was published and shelved due to lack of interest. Thank goodness things change, people learn to embrace the unusual and that someone, somewhere decided it was a good idea to publish this novella.

As mentioned by some of you, while I was read...more

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4 comments

Feb 07, 2008

James M. Madsen, M.D. rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: fiction, metaphysics, speculative-fiction, tolkien

Read in January, 2007

What a strange book! I picked this up partly because of its connections both to J.W. Dunne's equally odd book An Experiment in Time (which influenced not only Flann O'Brien but also J.R.R. Tolkien and others) and partly because of its reputed connections with the plot of the TV series Lost. Seeking an explanation of Lost in The Third Policeman is problematic partly because the producers of the series, while recommending the book as a source of potential answers to questions raised by the serie...more

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Jun 07, 2008

Shek rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

Read in June, 2008

I am not ashamed to say that I came to this book because it made a cameo on Lost.

Okay, couldn't keep a straight face. I am, sort of.

This book has two gears: tedium and suspense. Tedium of the circumlocutory-conversations-with-crazy-people variety (already read Swift and C.S. Lewis, thanks) and suspense of the crazy-people-about-to-kill-you-for-no-reason variety. I would have liked it better if it had laid off the slavishly boring footnotes referencing a made-up philosophe...more

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Jul 05, 2007

David rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

bookshelves: you-ll-snort-milk-thru--your-nose

Really this book deserves 4.5 stars.

From Wikipedia:

Flann O'Brien is rightly considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. The British writer Anthony Burgess was moved to say of him: "If we don't cherish the work of Flann O'Brien we are stupid fools who don't deserve to have great men. Flann O'Brien is a very great man." Burgess included At Swim-Two-Birds on his list of 99 Great Novels.

The full Wikipedia entry is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flann_O'Bri......more

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Sep 03, 2009

Nik Schuetz rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

Read in July, 2009

To me, this book reminded me of Alice and Wonderland; the Irish version. O'Brien is pretty good with playing with words and confusing you while you read it, which I like. He makes you think about the nature of ordinary objects in a very different way, for example his anthropomorphism concerning bicycles is very entertaining. I like to think of inanimate objects as having personalities. I also like that the characters of his book are very limited in their scope of intellect in that they may b...more

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Jan 13, 2009

Joanne rated it:

(review of other edition)

Read in January, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 23, 2009

Bondama rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

Read in January, 1983

This is one of my all-time favorite books. An Irish friend of mine once told me that to truly understand the country, you had to know this book, and know it well. He was right. I spent 17 years in Ireland, I even caught the reprints of Myles naGopaleen (another nom de plume of this wonderful writer) in the Irish Times.

There's an apocryphal story still making the rounds that this author used to get together with his friend, James Joyce, and instead of outwardly conversing, they'd j...more

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Jun 14, 2009

chris Gusta rated it:

(review of isbn 0452259126)

Read in July, 2009

recommended to chris by: Andrew Cole

The narrator of this book is a trememndous jerk. He kills an old man for his money, and yet is offended when he is accused of the murder of someone else (a murder committed by someone who has something in common with him, in any case). He lies to the police, and then becomes frustrated when, instead of getting what he wants, he is caught up in a web of deceit and horror. To be fair, the horror the narrator feels here, in his own private hell, is not really all that bad. It is incredibly mind...more

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Oct 08, 2008

Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

First amazing book I've newly read in a year or so. Sort of a Alice in Wonderland in a dark Russian farce with bicycle romance. Who could resist?
And the ending, the very ending, tied it all together and added an unexpected depth. Loved it.

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Dec 09, 2008

Pierce rated it:

(review of isbn 156478214X)

This is the book recommended to me most times in my life, I would estimate. And now I've read it.

I think, perhaps, Swim Two Birds made me laugh more. But only barely. The construction of de Selby, and the arguments between his critics that emerge in the footnotes is simply amazing. The kind of device you instantly want to steal. The construction of false worlds within false worlds.

There are so many ridiculous ideas here explored to their limits. The shifting of molecule...more